David Briggs born 16 March 1943

David Paul Briggs (March 16, 1943 – April 22, 2025) was a first-call American keyboardist, record producer, arranger, composer and studio owner. Briggs was one of an elite core of Nashville studio musicians known as "the Nashville Cats" and was featured in a major exhibition by the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2015. 

David Paul Briggs was born in Killen, Alabama, northeast of Muscle Shoals. He was the elder of two sons of James and Myrtle (Myrick) Briggs. His father was a letter carrier. Classically trained, David began playing professionally at the age of 14. He worked in a local band called the Crunk Brothers and, through them, met Norbert Putnam and ultimately gained session work at Fame. Mr. Briggs and Mr. Putnam played on Tommy Roe’s chart-topping 1962 hit, “Sheila,” and were members of his backing band when Mr. Roe was an opening act for the Beatles in their first U.S. concert, in 1964.

As a member of the original rhythm section at Fame Recording Studios, he helped put the northern Alabama hamlet of Muscle Shoals on the musical map. He played on landmark R&B recordings like Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On” (1962), Jimmy Hughes’s “Steal Away” (1964) and the Tams’ “What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am)” (1963), all of which were Top 40 pop singles as well as R&B hits. Briggs, meanwhile, had begun writing songs and releasing the occasional record of his own as both a singer and keyboardist. One was a single produced by Owen Bradley, who urged him to move to Nashville in 1964 to do studio work.

                Here's "I Say A Little Prayer" from above album.

                                   

Along with Putnam they began infusing country recordings with the understated, groove-rich variant of the Nashville Sound that became known as “countrypolitan.” In May 1966, he was given the opportunity of recording on sessions for Elvis Presley's album How Great Thou Art when Floyd Cramer was running late. Briggs continued to record and tour with Presley until February 1977.

L-R : David Briggs, Norbert Putnam, Elvis, Al Pachuki,
Jerry Carrigan, Felton Jarvis, Chip Young, Charlie McCoy,
and James Burton. June 1970.

Other artists briggs worked with include Dean Martin, Joan Baez, Nancy Sinatra, B.B. King, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, Tony Joe White, George Harrison, Todd Rundgren, Roy Orbison, The Monkees, J. J. Cale, Kris Kristofferson, Alice Cooper, Gary Stewart, Charley Pride, and many others.

In 1969, Briggs and Putnam opened Quadraphonic Sound, a much-in-demand studio that hosted projects by Neil Young, Dan Fogelberg, Jimmy Buffett and the Jacksons. Briggs joined Area Code 615 (from 1969-1971), a supergroup of session musicians, including Putnam and the guitarist Mac Gayden, who died April 2025. The band released a pair of albums of freewheeling country rock on Polydor Records.

Briggs and Putnam also founded their own publishing company, Danor Music, which had success with No. 1 pop hits like Steve Winwood’s “Higher Love” and Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Almost Have It All.” The two men sold Quadraphonic Sound in 1979, but Briggs opened another studio, House of David, three years later. The Blasters, Norah Jones, Bootsy Collins and the indie-rock band Yo La Tengo were among House of David’s numerous clients, along with B.B. King, for whom Mr. Briggs wrote arrangements.

Briggs would go on to play everything from the funky organ on Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie” to the pealing barroom piano on Conway Twitty’s honky-tonk weeper “The Image of Me.” He provided empathetic accompaniment on Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” a No. 1 country and Top 10 pop hit in 1971, and Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” which was also a Top 10 country single that year.

In the 1970s and ’80s, Briggs began writing and arranging (and sometimes singing) jingles for Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken and other products. In 1988, he became the music director for the Country Music Association’s annual television awards show, a position he held until 2001. Briggs was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1999 and along with Putnam, Jerry Carrigan and the guitarist Terry Thompson, Briggs was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville in 2019. He remained active as a musician and studio owner well into his 70s.

Briggs died from complications of renal cancer in a Nashville hospice facility, on April 22, 2025, at the age of 82. 

(Edited from an obit by Bill Friskics- Warren @ The New York Times & Wikipedia)